Wonders Unceasing
by darke-jedi
Summary: The war with Voldemort has been won, but personal battles are still being fought. Hermione Granger wins the round against Serverus Snape only to run up against a morose Harry Potter.
1. Childhood's End

**Wonders Unceasing**  
  
******  
  
**Author's note:**It's my first time of posting at ff.net, and I've been having no end of trouble with the formatting, so I apologise to anyone who finds this hard to read. This is my very first Harry Potter fic! It started as a response to the WIKTT challenge 'Seducing Serverus Snape', but it had ideas of its own. I've been reading too many HP fanfics recently, many of them excellent, and I'm sure some of them will have taken root in my subconscious. Hopefully I've still managed to do something original here, but if you think you recognise something please take it for the compliment it is and not a desire to steal your ideas. Constructive reviews will be received with enthusiasm, praise is always welcome, and flames will be gleefully collected and added to the fire during my next episode of pyromania- Bonfire Night is not far off, after all.  
  
**Anti-litigation charm (Whoever came up with that phrase, kudos! I LIKE it!):** The characters and setting are not mine, they belong to J.K.Rowling. I'm just playing with them and promise to put them back when I've finished.  
  
******  
  
**Chapter One: Childhood's End**  
  
Smoke roiled low over the ground, tattered billows of green-grey and rust redolent of sulphur and the sickly sweet stench of death. Its choking clots muffled shouted hexes and cries of pain and death. Wispy fingers greedily stroked across the bodies of the fallen as it hovered, blanketing and distorting the vision of those who still lived.   
  
Serverus Snape watched the sight with scientific detachment, feeling no pain, feeling nothing at all. Pain was not always a bad thing, in his experience. Pain meant you were still alive to feel it. This lack of pain, this sensation that he no longer lay on the blood-soaked ground that had once been Hogwarts' Quiddich pitch but instead floated a few inches above it, was no bad thing either. It meant he was dying.  
  
Dying was not something Snape feared. It was not something he had allowed himself to seek, not with the debts he owed and had still to pay, but now it was at hand he was not about to fight it. Life was a cruel master: harsh, fickle, demanding and forever unpredictable. Death was alluring, fascinating, soft and welcoming. Snape waited as it approached, calmly, almost serenely. His glazed eyes no longer saw the flurry of battle that still swirled about him, scattered clots of Aurors and students, Death Eaters, Dementors, Hags and Harpies, Giants and Griffins... he had seen a unicorn earlier, he was sure. Nothing had escaped Voldemort's desire to rule. Eventually, everyone had been forced to takes sides.  
  
His thoughts were wondering. His ears hissed and whistled, filling his mind with red cotton-wool. His consciousness struggled against the enveloping haze. This was Hogwarts. Voldemort was winning, and he was dying. Dead, death, darkness, night, nightshade... was a key ingredient in several healing potions, although its less pleasant aspects had to be carefully countered by the addition of properly activated yarrow or agrimony...  
  
A voice broke through his dazed musings. A familiar voice, but not one he wanted to hear.  
  
_Malfoy_.  
  
"Still breathing, traitor? Who'd have thought you'd last so long? Not like my son." Lucius Malfoy's usually cultured tones were twisted and rough, distorted and malformed like the Master he served. Madness danced on his babbling words. "I'm glad you're alive, you know. You killed him. You killed my son. It was your fault. You took him away from me, and he died. You made me do it! There's blood here, see? The blood's on my hands, but you were the one that killed him, and now I can make you pay for it..."  
  
"You're insane, Lucius." Snape wondered if it really was him who had spoken, if his voice could ever sound so faint and weak, a whisper that barely carried itself beyond his own lips. "'This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeit of our own behaviour - we make guilty of our own disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars¹.' Have you ever read Shakespeare, Lucius? I think you'd find most of Macbeth to be appropriate... or perhaps Hamlet... not that you'd appreciate the subtleties... he was ever the poet, keeping ajar the door to madness.²"  
  
Lucius tired of words, and raised his wand. "Crucio!"  
  
Through the blue-white tongues of furnace-fire that lanced through his frame, Snape tried to keep the detachment he'd felt, tried to separate his mind from the writhing torment of his screaming body, sought the release of oblivion. Through the clamouring chimes of wild church-bells within his skull he heard the quiet voice of an angel.  
  
"Reddere!"  
  
The verdant sparks of a counterspell zipped across Snape's bloodied vision. There was another scream, not his own, and the pain of the Unforgivable curse was replaced by the keen shock of its absence. Still he wished for oblivion, his awareness once again reminded of too many broken bones, of burns and cuts and the crackling pulse of tortured nerves. He didn't know what had happened to Malfoy. Something equally painful, Snape hoped.  
  
"Hang on, I'm coming."  
  
He knew that voice too, Snape thought blearily, and yet it was unfamiliar. A gentle touch brushed him, molten lava on his damaged skin.  
  
"Sorry, it hurts I know, but it'll get better. Just hang on..."  
  
Snape let himself feel infuriated by the voice. He knew who it was, but he couldn't place a name to it, and anger was a tool he could use now. If he wasn't to be allowed to die at last then anger would serve to get him back on his feet, anger would drive him back into the battle where perhaps at last he could find his rest. Ice flowed across his leg and torso and he drank in the creeping cold, transfigured it into flames of rage to replace the burned flesh it healed. He clenched his jaw as the long bone in his thigh slid back into place, swallowing the agony as the leg clicked and mended and adding the pain to the fuel of his ire.   
  
"Okay, that's over. Eat this, it'll help." Sympathetic hands tipped his head and brushed aside his tumbled, sweat-matted hair, then froze. Startled and suddenly fearful eyes stared into his own. The hands almost dropped him again. "P... P... Professor Snape sir!"  
  
Then, with something that might as well have been magic, the fear was gone. Determination settled on the rounded features, lending them a new and stark angularity. The soft brown eyes lost their scared apology. "Eat this, sir," Neville Longbottom repeated, putting a soft section of root to the Potion Master's lips. "Professor Dumbledore's rallied most of our side to the base of the Astronomy tower, sir. The centaurs are leading a group at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, in case Voldemort tries to bring in reinforcements."  
  
Amazing, Snape thought faintly, the boy said the name without so much as flinching.  
  
"Professor McGonagall's gone, sir... Flitwick..." Longbottom choked, and his eyes burned. Snape was chilled to see not sorrow, but a fury to match his own. "Flitwick was on _his_ side. He's dead too," Longbottom added, cold and flat. "Flitwick's dead."  
  
Not a boy, Snape realised. This was not a child any more, not the terrified dunderhead who brought disaster to every potions class he attended. What Snape's goading had failed to achieve, war had finally managed.  
  
"How are you feeling?" Longbottom asked.  
  
"I'll live, at least for the moment," Snape said dryly.  
  
Longbottom checked around the pair of them. "Now would be a good time to move, sir. Most of the fighting is over that way." He nodded towards the castle. "If we can get to the edge of the forest there's a place to hide until the Ompassim root has time to work. Can you stand up?"  
  
Snape stared at the proffered hand. Until today, accepting Longbottom's help would have seemed the height of stupidity, a certain recipe for failure of the most spectacular and embarrassing variety. Today, the world was no longer the same place. Without hesitating any longer, Snape took the hand and lurched painfully to his feet, muttering curses as other, smaller injuries jostled for his attention. "Ompassim root?" Snape queried sceptically, to keep his mind from brooding on the physical discomfort as he limped through the sulphurous clouds that hugged their path, putting more weight than he liked on the shoulder of his rescuer. His every step sent sickening stabs up his thigh, straight to his stomach. "Nobody's ever managed to grow that in Britain, and it doesn't travel well."  
  
"It was m... my final project, for Herbology," Longbottom stuttered, lapsing briefly back into his younger nervousness.  
  
"Ten points to Gryffindor," Snape sniffed. He felt Longbottom's slight start and saw the brief flash of a surprised grin before it was lost behind the clouds of disillusion.  
  
"As if that matters now," Longbottom growled savagely. "Houses never mattered. They were only a way to... to... to tell people what to think."  
  
"Congratulations Mr Longbottom," Snape drawled with a tired echo of his old, silk-edged sarcasm, feeling too green and ill to put much venom into it. "I see you finally found a use for the contents of your skull."  
  
Longbottom gave him a wary, sidelong look. "Hermione was right," he said.  
  
"Obviously the sun still shines from her nether regions, so far as you are concerned," Snape responded with a sneer.  
  
To Snape's surprise, Longbottom laughed, a sound quickly quieted to avoid attracting the attention of any nearby enemies. "She said you were far too cynical to believe anything Voldemort might promise, and far too nasty to be the real enemy. Not like Flitwick," he spat suddenly. "I _liked_ him."  
  
"My apologies for failing to destroy your faith in human nature some years ago," Snape muttered, wincing at the sudden jolt as he stumbled over a nameless jumble of black that had once been a living being, pausing as he was beset by a wave of dizziness.  
  
Longbottom scowled, an unfamiliar expression on his round, soft face. "I'd tell you I could actually like you a bit now, if you didn't look as if you already wanted to throw up." He checked around again, looking behind- a habit that everyone had acquired of late. "If it hurts too much we could stop for a bit?"  
  
Snape immediately straightened, willing to endure any amount of pain to avoid the pity of a Gryffindor. The smoke swirled around them still, hiding their progress from the dark shapes that passed them: Death Eaters and their allies hunting down stragglers and toying with the injured. Voldemort's followers seemed to be everywhere, moving in twos and threes through the twilight and the haze of battle. If the thick of the fighting was back near the school then Snape did not want to consider the odds the defenders were facing; he should be there, with them, able at last to fight openly instead of hiding in the shadows. He _would_ fight, once Longbottom's all-healing root completed its work... if only there was time, before the Dark Lord overpowered the desperate little knot of resistance.  
  
They were almost at the edge of the Forbidden Forest when Snape stiffened and directed a glare of pure animosity towards his helper. Of course he'd been willing to hurry on at the suggestion of a halt. He wondered, though the dizzying pounding of blood through his overtaxed body, where on Earth Longbottom had found the deviousness to think of that particular tactic.  
  
"Nearly there, sir," Longbottom said brightly, a slight quaver in his voice indicating nervousness despite the bravado in the grin he gave the Potions Master.  
  
"If it wouldn't be an utter travesty of everything my House holds dear," Snape murmured, trying to summon his usual velvet-covered steel and finding only a whisper, "I'd almost begin to wonder if some part of you mightn't have fitted into Slytherin after all."  
  
"I think not," hissed a new voice: a voice that froze Snape's tarnished soul, that filled his limbs with leaden horror, that plucked his will from his grasp and spun him around, puppet-like, to face its owner. Longbottom turned beside him, staring like a terrified rabbit into the hellfire lanterns of Voldemort's gaze. Voldemort now ignored the younger man. He was focussed on the Potion's Master, a concentrated force of malevolent evil given bodily form and directed now upon its enemy. "Serverus Snape," the Dark Lord hissed, in a voice admirably suited to the sibilant name. "Traitor."  
  
"Tom Riddle," Snape responded, dragging the cloak of vindictive nastiness back around the aching remnants of his battered consciousness. "I do hope the potion helped clear up that little incontinence problem." He felt Longbottom quivering and hoped it was laughter, however hysterical. Longbottom was no duellist and he himself was in no shape for a fight, but ridicule could still be a weapon. Mockery should at least ensure them a quick and relatively painless death, infuriating Voldemort beyond the desire to play with his victims. Besides, if Snape was going to be forced to meet his end while standing shoulder to shoulder with Neville Longbottom he was going to make sure that Voldemort felt at least as ridiculus as he did.  
  
"You're a disgrace to your House." Voldemort's voice sizzled from his lipless mouth, his eyes narrowing to blazing slits of hatred. Masked, robed figures flittered behind him, unspeaking, keeping their distance. Clearly this was one matter that Voldemort wished to deal with himself.  
  
"_You_ are a disgrace to wizardry," Snape purred in reply, softly as a stalking panther. "So unsure of your power you surround yourself with sheep to bleat your praises. So _pathetically_ desperate for recognition and acceptance that you would destroy anyone who dared refuse to kiss your feet. So afraid of your own..."  
  
Voldemort's curse sent Snape to his knees, gasping and gagging. "You amuse me, traitor. Such brave words from Dumbledore's puppet. Such defiance when you can barely stand."  
  
Snape coughed, a few drops of blood spraying from his lips onto the burned grass on which he knelt. He wished Voldemort would find himself a better speechwriter. Dying next to Neville Longbottom he could cope with, but to die at the wand-tip of a bald lizard with the dramatic flare of a bad horror story was excruciating. He struggled to draw air into his lungs and clear his spinning head, and didn't try to rise; but beneath the cover of his bedraggled robes he slipped his wand into his hand and gathered his strength. He couldn't kill Voldemort, but he could get in a good shot before he went down. "Does it make you feel good, Thomas?" he rasped, eyes fixed on the ground to give himself a point of focus. "Kicking a beaten foe?"  
  
He felt rather than heard Longbottom's faint gasp as he gave that indirect admission of defeat, and wondered at the faith of those who thought they would survive even when the inevitable end was before them. They were beaten, they were fighting a losing battle, and the only reason to fight was to have the chance to die with honour rather than to continue living in shame after defeat. Movement nearby warned him that Longbottom had been reacting to something else entirely.  
  
"Voldemort, you bastard! Stop giving the greasy git the beating I've wanted to give him since the first year, and come get what you deserve!"   
  
It was a Gryffindor, Snape thought in dazed amusement. Only a Gryffindor could possess such bull-headed, idiotic, outraged, self-righteous delusions of impervious immortality. A befreckled, red-headed Gryffindor, simmering with unthinking fury, charging right into the dragon's mouth in a fit of chivalrous stupidity.  
  
"Do I know you?" Voldemort asked. His manner was impeccably polite, the Dark Lord's prelude to his worst displays of creative brutality.  
  
Snape lifted his head to see Ron Weasley gently laying a still, silent figure onto the dead earth; a small figure of black robes and a tumbled mass of wild, brown, curly hair. "Look what your, your _damned_ Death Eaters did!" Ron raged, pulling out a wand and clutching it in his shaking fist. "Well I've had it! I'm not afraid of you, Voldemort! Call yourself a Lord? You're nothing but an ugly, crazy git who doesn't know when to die."  
  
Snape closed his eyes, wishing that Weasley had paid more attention in class. Even if the boy had never improved his Potions grade as a result, he might at least have been able to come up with a better collection of insults. So the Granger girl was dead too? Snape felt his teeth grit and his throat tighten. She was the last person he'd expected to die, the last person anyone would expect. Wonderboy and his carrot-top sidekick were the ones who always plunged themselves headfirst into trouble. Granger was the sensible one, the one to get them back out of the situations they impulsively jumped at. Granger was the intelligent one, the one who would take a step back and _think_ before acting. Granger was the first student in years to have him hunting vainly for genuine criticisms and worrying that one day she'd stop finding answers to his questions and start asking them right back.  
  
Snape looked again, but Granger remained unmoving on the blackened grass. She should have been the last to go, not the first. She should have stayed with her books and her quills and her research. She should never have taken up with the Boy-Who-Didn't-Know-When-To-Stop. She should have been brilliant, a star shining with her own light, not a satellite, not 'Hermione? Oh, the bushy-haired one who hangs around with Harry Potter.' Should have, could have, and now never would. Snape was in no position to care, had no right to care, and above all could not afford to think about why it even occured to him to care.  
  
"Hermione?" Longbottom's distraught query drew the Potion Master's attention. Clearly it caught Voldemort's as well, because the Weasley boy's first magical shot almost caught the Dark Lord by surprise.  
  
The red-head dodged a return blast, still hopping on the spot after avoiding the curse, bouncing like an angry ferret. "Hah! You missed! Getting slow in your old age, Mouldermort?"  
  
Snape groaned to himself. If Weasley wanted to join his bookworm friend as quickly as possible then he was doing everything right. Voldemort had waved away his attendant Death Eaters, confident in his ability to handle an irate student, and was watching with more amusement than anger. He was simply spinning out the moment when he'd throw the Killing Curse, Snape thought; or perhaps he'd use Imperius, the Dark Lord might well think it entertaining to force Weasley to kill Longbottom.  
  
Longbottom. After that short distraction Snape had almost forgotten him. The boy was a walking magical accident, but he'd dealt with Malfoy when he'd caught the man by surprise... Snape rolled his eyes enough to get a look at Longbottom's face, caught his attention with a subtle nudge against his leg. Snape let his wand peep from under his robes, and nodded almost imperceptibly towards Voldemort. Longbottom nodded and tensed, fumbling his own wand into his hand inside his sleeve where the masked figures in the background couldn't see it.  
  
Snape returned to the unequal match of Weasley against the Dark Lord of the Death Eaters. Voldemort was throwing hexes at random now, chuckling rustily as Weasley stumbled and bit his lips against the pain of those he failed to dodge or deflect.  
  
"C'mon, Tommie, I've had worse from Crookshanks," Weasley managed to shout, his voice strained and the watery fireball that followed his words rolling wide and fizzling out.  
  
Snape refrained from a patronising snort of disgust only to avoid drawing attention to himself. He poised his wand, and froze as he caught movement from the corner of his eye, away to one side- the side away from the foolhardy Weasley boy. A pebble rolled, moved as if by invisible feet. Grass stalks bent against unseen legs. Snape prodded at a past memory: Dumbledore's effusive praise of a long ago chess game. A game where Ron Weasley had sacrificed himself to allow his friends to move into position.  
  
Great Merlin!  
  
Shaking with anticipation, Snape glanced at the fallen figure of Hermione Granger and saw a pair of open eyes shielded beneath the untameable mop of brown hair, very much alive, poised and ready behind a carefully palmed wand. Some instinct caused her gaze to flicker in his direction. Her eyes flared with recognition, with a Gryffindor's eager anticipation and her own instinctive calculated caution. She grinned swiftly, and in that second she roused something within the Potions Master that Dumbledore had only managed to coax into sleepy resentfulness.  
  
Hope.  
  
This wasn't some damned, doomed display of foolhardy Gryffindor courage. It was a desperate plan, true, the plan of those who had no choice but to seize the slightest thread of a chance, but it was a plan.  
  
Snape returned the grin, but it dropped as the air filled with the sickly green flame flaring from Voldemort's wand. Weasley was caught in the glare, starkly outlined at the heart of the pulsing light. Hermione's attention abruptly returned to Voldemort, expression simultaneously bleak, focussed, intense, and grimly determined. Her lip trembled, but her hand never wavered.  
  
She nodded sharply.  
  
Four wands spewed fourth their vengeance against the Dark Lord, leaping ahead of the sudden realisation of the hovering Death Eaters. Five people forever cast themselves as heroes of the wizarding world: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Serverus Snape, Neville Longbottom... and Ron Weasley. The masked figures struck, but it was too late, too late. The light of bittersweet victory spattered upwards, ruby drops of burning blood staining the distant starry tears of the night sky.  
  
******  
  
No, it doesn't stop there, there's more on the way!  
  
**Refernces:**  
1. King Lear, by William Shakespeare.  
2. Christopher Morley  
Chapter title from the novel by Arthur C. Clarke 


	2. The Cold Light of Day

**Wonders Unceasing**  
  
******  
  
**Author's Note:** The chapter title is competing for the Least Original Chapter Title of the Decade Award. I think titles have their own special breed of bunny, and my over-energetic Plot variety scares them away.  
  
**Disclaimer:** They are not mine, much as I might wish it. I am merely a penniless student of the written word worshipping at the feet of the Mistress, who owns everything barring the possibly original plot ideas that might have crept in here somewhere.  
  
******  
  
**Chapter Two: The Cold Light of Day**  
  
"Harry! Oh Harry!" It was a girl's cry, thick with tears of sorrow and joy.  
  
The cry made Snape want to vomit... Which begged the question of why he was still around to have his stomach turned by the audible display of unguarded emotion. Potter's voice murmured a response, sickeningly brave in its weakness, muttering condolences and reassurances. Granger was sobbing on his shoulder, no doubt. She would have survived. Of course. His first instincts had been right after all. He should have listened to them, rather than indulging in fooling sentimentality- even if it had only been within the privacy of his private thoughts. Granger was the sort of person who survived. Harry Bloody Potter wasn't, Exhibit A being his father James, but seemingly the Boy Who Lived was now The Boy Who Lived Twice anyway.  
  
Given the familiar smells that assailed his nostrils, Hogwarts had also survived. The Hospital Wing was still sheltered and warm and his supine frame was accommodated on a reasonably comfortable bed, not the shelf of a prison cell. He could therefore reasonable assume that they had 'won', if being the side to come out alive with a partially intact building to show for it could be claimed a victory. He'd reserve judgement on Voldemort's demise until he had irrefutable evidence. The mere loss of a body had, after all, not stopped him last time.   
  
Snape sourly turned to self-contemplation, running a personal inventory of his body with the ease of long and painful practice. Everything still appeared to be attached. The skin down his right side felt tight and hot, and would undoubtedly itch later. His thigh throbbed faintly, as did his right shoulder. There was a metallic-tasting gap in his top teeth, but the loss of a few teeth was not going to cause him any regrets. His guts felt simultaneously hollow, bloated and raw, and he had the nasty suspicion he'd be on a liquid diet for the next few days, but all in all he'd come off lightly. A few more moments to rest, and he'd try moving...  
  
"Ow!" A pained protest reached Snape's ears. His lips twitched in irritation.  
  
"Oh, Harry, sorry! I'm sorry, I forgot..." The female voice was unrecognisably muffled.  
  
"Don't worry about it." Harold B. Potter, so _manly_ and _heroic_.  
  
There was a loud sniffle. Snape had to try very hard not to heave.  
  
"I'm making your shirt all wet," the girl mumbled, and Snape cursed her for the image of Harry Potter in a wet shirt surrounded by adoring fans.  
  
"I don't mind." Merlin's Beard, Snape could _hear_ the smile in the boy's voice, the lopsided one that had persistently distracted most of the female element of the Seventh Year potions class for the last few terms, as well as one or two of the other boys. It was James all over again! All Potters should be required to attend classes with a bag over their heads. Maybe then there would be a few more successful potions and a few less scorch-marks on the dungeon's desks.  
  
There was the sound of a very juicy nose being thoroughly blown. Snape help his breath and swallowed hard.  
  
"I must look a sight..." Why did every woman on the planet seem to have their appearance as the first, second and third item on their list of priorities? Or did they assume that if they looked adorable then the men would do the hard work of actually surviving?  
  
"You look adorable..." Now Snape _knew_ he was going to retch.  
  
"You're just trying to make me feel better." Despite whatever stereotypical failings they might accurately be accused of, Snape thought sourly, all females appeared possessed of an innate talent for manipulation of the male mind. That last comment was obviously calculated to induce protestations of denial followed by further compliments.  
  
"Did it work?" Snape felt a momentary spurt of pride on behalf of his gender when the trap was side-stepped, and grudgingly admitted that Potter had learned something in those interminable years of annoying adolescence.  
  
"A bit..." Snape winced at the breathy suggestion. If Potter wanted the girl, he undoubtedly had her well hooked. He didn't need to be able to see the pair of them to know she was cuddled against his chest, tilting her face invitingly upwards beneath his chin. Those two soft words painted the picture with unwelcome clarity. Snape swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and refused to admit even to himself that his nausea might owe more to injury than to the sounds of affection... Great Goddess, how could a kiss sound so loud! He stifled a groan, and tried to burrow his ears deeper into the pillow.  
  
"You're awake, then," someone told him.  
  
"Obviously," he snarled. "How could anyone sleep through that _touching_ display?"  
  
"Mmm, acid enough, but lacks the usual biting wit. Not quite yourself yet," the Someone concluded.  
  
Snape irritably opened his eyes and found Someone, in the person of Hermione Granger, seated beside him. The hair he had last seen tumbled wildly about her head, wet and bedraggled and matted with blood, was now dragged back into a frizzy pony-tail. Her face was still pale, too grave and old for a child- a woman- of her years, with grey smudges beneath her shadowed brown eyes. It was cleaned and healed, but it was still held the drawn intensity of an overtired warrior caught behind enemy lines. It was an expression he'd seen too often of late, etched onto the faces around him. It was an expression he'd known for years, looking back at him from every mirror he passed.  
  
Blinking stupidly for a second, Snape glanced in the direction he guessed he'd find Potter in and saw him tightly embracing a redheaded girl.  
  
Ginny Weasley.  
  
And not another red-head in sight.  
  
Oh.  
  
So her brother hadn't made it.  
  
Snape hoped Granger wasn't there to try blubbering all over _his_ shoulder about it. He frowned, chasing an errant recollection. "Longbottom?" he asked as he tracked down the thought. He was profoundly grateful that Granger didn't give him an approving look for his selfless query about another's welfare. She didn't really give him any look at all, her feelings tucked carefully away where they would not get in the way, where they could not hurt, where they could be forgotten until there was time to examine them and perhaps they could remain buried forever.  
  
"He's fine. Well, as fine as anybody can be after a double dose of the Cruciatus Curse." The silent assumption that Snape would be familiar enough with that was left hanging in the air. "He's walking, anyway. Professor Dumbledore's okay, and Hagrid, and Professor Sprout... and Madam Pomfrey, of course." She fell silent, leaving Snape to wonder if she'd chosen those other four out of some insight into the few people he'd actually come to respect, or simply because everyone else had gone.  
  
"You?" Snape asked.  
  
Granger tensed, shrugged and looked away. Physically she seemed healthy enough, her breathing calm, her small movements unrestricted by pain.  
  
"Not... with Potter?" Snape had almost said 'commiserating', and had managed to bite it back. Even a greasy git had enough respect not to speak scathingly of the dead.  
  
Granger snorted and waved a hand towards Potter and the Weasley girl, who were now both tangled on the narrow infirmary bed in an almost indecently intimate position.  
  
"He's looking after Ginny. She's looking after him." She made a sound that was suspiciously like a choked and angry sob, quickly suppressed. "I can't believe how many people are... doing that. After everything that's happened! How can they even think of it? And people are already talking about a _party_." She spat the word with venom, and gave Snape a grim little smile of companionable sympathy when he grimaced at the concept. "Celebrating the _victory_. I can't even hide in the library. Flitwick set fire to it..."  
  
Snape blinked at the raw hatred resonating within her as she mentioned the name. "Then perhaps you'll finally discover that not all lessons can be learned from books, Miss Granger," he drawled, casting Incendio at the dry tinder of her emotion before its flames could consume her from the inside.  
  
Granger's anger blazed suddenly, her face flushing and then blanching white, her fists raising involuntarily as the full force of her deadly glare struck the Potion's Master. He returned it impassively, one eyebrow quirking upwards as if daring attack, until Granger's shoulders sagged and she looked away again. "Thank you," she mumbled, and fell silent again.  
  
The moments stretched into minutes. Ginny Weasley stumbled from the bed, closed the curtains around it, and returned to Potter's embrace. Granger stared stubbornly at the wall, her hands in her lap where her fingers steadily picked away at her fingernails.  
  
"Miss Granger," Snape said eventually, breaking the silence. "If you are here in some misguided attempt to bring a little brightness to the joyless life of the sick and wounded then you are failing in a truly spectacular fashion."  
  
Granger finally turned her head and glowered at him.  
  
Snape sighed tiredly. "If, as I suspect, you are in fact here for a good reason then I suggest you spit it out before we both fossilise."  
  
"Not here," Granger muttered. "Not..." she nodded towards the other beds and concealing curtains. "Perhaps you could give me detention. In the dungeons. During the party. I'm sure I could do something to earn it."  
  
"How very lacking in public spirit, Miss Granger," Snape said, settling into his familiar sneer. "Not to mention the cowardly example you'd set your Housemates, hiding away while everyone else is having fun." He didn't trouble to hide his contempt for the concept of jollity. "I'd deduct points, but, as Longbottom pointed out earlier, that hardly seems relevant any more."  
  
"It's my last day of school tomorrow anyway," Granger said distantly. "That is... it would be. I doubt there'll be any sort of graduation now. Not after... everything." There was a weight of meaning behind the words, far heavier than the simple knowledge that the final grades were unlikely to have been foremost on anybody's mind during the past few days, or even the recent loss of a teacher who had been both mentor and friend and the betrayal of another who had seemed to be so. Her breath caught, and Snape heard her sniff sharply.   
  
"Spare me the maudlin self-pity, Miss Granger," he spat. "If you want sympathy, go bawling to Potter." Granger's spine went rigid. The glare was back. Snape relaxed slightly. "Wipe that gormless stare off your face, girl, and make yourself useful rather than sitting around like a piece of lost luggage. If Poppy doesn't have something to keep your hands busy you may as well come with me. The wastrels around here will no doubt have made over-enthusiastic use of the healing potions in the stores, under the touchingly faithful assumption that I would actually be around to replace them."  
  
"You almost weren't," Granger informed him coldly. "If it wasn't for Neville-"  
  
"Then my Potions classes would have been a far less stressful experience," Snape interrupted, his intimidating frown daring her to say any more on the subject of his debt to Longbottom.  
  
Granger frowned back. Then, disconcertingly, she smiled. "I'd be happy to help you brew some potions, Professor Snape," she said sweetly. "Why don't you lead the way?"  
  
Snape cursed himself, knowing she had him caught. Slowly he manoeuvred himself upright, keeping his eyes firmly closed in an effort to stop the room from spinning in response to the motion. He determinedly told his stomach that it was not to empty itself and make a fool of him in front of a student. Once he was accustomed to sitting upright, he opened his eyes. There was a vial hovering before them, held by a deceptively helpful-looking Granger.  
  
"Madam Pomfrey thought you might want this. It's supposed to help with nausea. But as you're obviously feeling fine-" she made as if to put it away again, but Snape made a successful grab for it, swallowing back the response the sudden lurch produced and hastily tipping the contents down his throat. "Your reactions seem to be up to speed, anyway," Granger told him. "Madam Pomfrey said I was to make sure you stayed here, but as you're a Professor and I'm only a student..." she shrugged. "Although you'd probably better hurry if you want to run away. She'll coming back to check on you soon."  
  
Snape wished for the days when she'd quailed at his scowl. Now she merely returned it with interest.  
  
"Well?" Granger asked, outwardly cool and composed. She rose from her seat, gracefully, Snape noted; and he had experience enough to recognise it as the grace of a duellist. Perhaps the company of Potter and Weasley had not been such a bad choice after all, if their instinct for dragging her into danger had honed her youthful energy and sharp intellect into an effective fighter. It was almost a pity that if Voldemort really could be removed from the picture she was likely to get pushed into some harmless Ministry position where those in charge wouldn't have to feel intimidated by her.  
  
Snape stiffened to stop himself from flinching as she stooped slightly and set a hand on his left forearm: small, warm and strong. "Miss Granger," he warned.  
  
"I've been wondering," she said, only a faint apology in her tone, "how we'd be able to tell. Harry's scar's gone, but..." she patted his sleeve. "I'd prefer to have corroborating evidence."  
  
Snape mentally berated himself for not having thought of checking for himself. So he was not the only one slow to believe that the Dark Lord might finally be dead?  
  
"Reading my mind, Miss Granger?" Snape's fingers plucked at the hem of the sleeve. Then, with a derisive snort for his hesitation, he drew back the rough fabric of the hospital gown and regarded his arm. He knew that his expression remained emotionless, and it was not altogether a false reflection of his inner state. The absence of the mark that had ruled his life for so long was something that would take a while to sink in. What he mostly felt at that moment was numb and exhausted.  
  
"I suppose that will have to do," Granger sighed. "There was a body," she added in a tight voice. Her gaze flickered to the ground.  
  
Snape recognised guilt when he saw it, and blamed it on idiotic Gryffindor chivalry. "Perhaps you'd prefer it if he'd survived?"  
  
Granger's eyes met his, with a force that was almost physical in its resolution. It was not an expression Snape wanted to see from the wrong end of a wand. "No," she said, and the word did not need to be loud. Then the palpable sense of purpose faded. She looked away again uncertainly, before collecting herself. "Are you coming or not," she snapped.  
  
"Acid enough, but lacks the recent biting wit." Snape eased his weight onto his legs, testing the healed break in his thigh.  
  
"How original, Professor," Granger said dryly, then cringed as a moan of pleasure filtered through the curtains around Potter's bed. "Let's get out of here."  
  
Snape allowed himself a humourless chuckle. If Granger had ever been a member of the Cult of Harry Potter then the shine had worn off long ago; and he rather thought that her attachment to the Boy Who Irritated came despite his fame, not because of it. Despite the name, and the uncomplimentary comments that Potter and Weasley had flung her way during their early acquaintance, and her undisguised frustration with their cavalier attitudes and lack of appreciation for scholarly pursuits. Granger clearly had greater reserves of patience and tolerance than Snape had himself.  
  
Those reserves seemed to have been depleted. She was tapping her foot as she waited for him to make a move. He toyed with the childish urge to keep her waiting purely to annoy her further, but another moan from the next bed was sufficient to motivate him towards the door. He stopped with one hand on the door handle, telling himself that he wasn't using it to keep himself upright and wondering a little dizzily why Granger hadn't followed.  
  
She gave him a long look up and down, eyebrows raising slowly, smiling slightly. Snape glanced down. His lips thinned, and he scowled, trying to achieve in a baggy white hospital gown the effect he achieved so effortlessly when clad in billowing black robes. "I fail to see what you find so amusing, Miss Granger."  
  
He waited for the comeback that he knew Granger was capable of, but she simply shook her head. "It's probably hysteria," she said and came over to him, holding out an arm draped with deep green silk. "Madam Pomfrey had your dressing gown brought over from your rooms. You'd better wear it. If any of the First Years see you like that they'll have a fit."  
  
Snape felt absurdly grateful for the garment, and covered the fact with a sneer. "After having survived Voldemort's best efforts, Miss Granger?"  
  
To Snape's immense surprise, Granger grinned at him. "After having survived your Potions lessons I doubt any of the youngsters found their part of the fighting to be that terrifying. But Professor Snape in white? That really would mean the end of the world."  
  
"If they are truly that frail of spirit then they obviously need further toughening up." Snape ungraciously pulled his dressing gown from Granger's arm, and started the uncomfortable process of putting it on while remaining upright and causing the least possible aggravation to his injuries.  
  
Granger failed to look offended at the lack of thanks. "You're going to deprive them of the opportunity by dressing anyway? How selfish of you, Professor."  
  
Snape regarded her darkly. "I'm sure I can find a sufficiently disconcerting alternative, Miss Granger. Perhaps I could try being _nice_ to one of them."  
  
There was a twist to the corner of Granger's lips that was positively devious. "That would be cruel! They're paranoid enough as it is. Anyway, would you know how?" she added dubiously.  
  
"I'm sure I could find _something_ positive about the little idiots, if I had to. A few of them have mastered the undervalued art of keeping their mouths shut, for example." Snape drew out the last words into a drawl, eyeing Granger significantly.  
  
"Well, that's one compliment you could try," she responded, choosing to remain oblivious to his suggestion. "Although it's too much like an insult to really unnerve them. It would have to be something completely out of character."  
  
Snape blinked. Granger was playing games, and he couldn't work out what exactly she was up to. He really wasn't at his best, he privately admitted, when he found a Gryffindor's schemes to be anything but crystal clear. "To be properly unbalancing it would also have to be true," he pointed out, sticking to the obvious line of conversation in the hope of uncovering the underlying motivation for it.  
  
"I suppose it would," Granger said, "if your put-downs are anything to go by."  
  
Snape waved away the obvious with an impatient hand gesture. Of course the unsympathetic criticism of genuine faults had more bite to them. Insults that were obviously unfair merely invited anger, or tears, along with a nice side-order of self-righteousness. Genuine criticism forced deliberate denial, active acceptance or change. The effects of praise were far harder to control. "Your talent for stating the obvious is truly breathtaking, Miss Granger."  
  
Granger gave him a scathing look. "Did you know you have a wonderful voice, Professor?"  
  
Snape paused for the follow up, and felt obscurely wrong-footed when none was forthcoming.  
  
Granger was watching him with glee. "See?"  
  
Snape set his jaw and narrowed his eyes. He would not be outsmarted by a student, let alone a Gryffindor. Unfortunately he was still unsure what the rules of this game were, and had the nasty feeling that however he played he was automatically on the losing side. "You have a particularly fascinating personal library, Miss Granger."  
  
"I do?" Granger was still enjoying herself.  
  
"Oh yes. Very... parchmenty. And..." He leaned in, and lowered his voice to a silken murmur. If he couldn't guess the rules, he'd start a game of his own. "...brown."  
  
Granger made a tiny choking sound that could have been nervousness, but the dancing light in her eyes meant it was more likely to be a giggle. "I'm sure you can do better than that, Professor. Has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful hands?"  
  
Snape coughed, unnerved yet again. "Has anyone ever mentioned your feet, Miss Granger?"  
  
Granger gave him an odd look. "Mentioned my feet?"  
  
Snape nodded slowly. "Your feet, Miss Granger." He leaned closer still. "You have two of them." Granger couldn't hide her giggle that time. Snape bent to whisper right into her ear. "And they both touch the ground."  
  
Granger pulled away enough to turn her head and stare at him. Then she burst out laughing. Snape regarded her in sardonic amusement. "Your talent for stating the obvious is truly breathtaking, Professor Snape." She shook her head, still chuckling. Snape found himself involuntarily responding in kind. "Okay, I'll let you off," Granger spluttered. "You don't have to be nice to the First Years."  
  
The curtain about Potter's bed was twitched aside in response to the laughter. Two heads peeped through, flushed and startled. The surprise amplified into utter bemusement at the sight of the dreaded Potions Master smiling and Hermione Granger giggling to the point of tears. Potter's mouth dropped open, then flapped shut again.  
  
"Hermione?" Potter asked, shocked. He looked between Snape and Granger, as if trying to take it in but finding it too much.  
  
The uncharacteristic mirth dropped from Snape's features, frown lines settling back into place, deepening as his brows lowered and his lips twisted downwards. "Though it pains me to admit as much, Miss Granger, you were right. It must be hysteria. If you must inflict me with your inconsequential questions you can do so in the potions classroom, while putting your idle hands and empty head to performing some _useful_ work for a change." He swept through the door, managing to get a swirl from his silken dressing-gown.  
  
A few moments later the door banged behind him, and Granger's running footsteps caught him up. "My compliments on the exit, Professor. Very dramatic. Nice recovery. But you've used that 'empty head' insult at least ten times now, and 'idle hands'? Not exactly original. They're like the minor analgesic potions- after a while, they lose their effectiveness. Or is that the idea? Building up tolerance and immunity?"  
  
"No." Snape did not bother to slow his pace to suit Granger's shorter legs, his dressing gown flapping with the speed of his stride. "I simply enjoy humiliating people."  
  
Granger lapsed into an unnervingly thoughtful silence that was less irritating but more worrying than her garrulousness of a moment before. "Okay," she said after a while.  
  
Snape stopped at the door to the Potions laboratory, and swung to face her. "Okay?" He imbued the word with all the contempt and disbelief he could muster. "That is all you have to say?"  
  
Granger merely folded her arms and smiled up at him. "I think there was some work to get on with, Professor Snape sir?"  
  
Snape studied her for a moment, reading her face, and had to fight not to shudder. Hermione Granger liked nothing better than a mental challenge, and he'd come to the sudden and awful realisation that _he_ was her current project.  
  
******  
  
Zebee, iejasu and pigwidgeon37, thank you very much for your comments! Reassuring to know that someone out there read the first chapter, and it was nice to know which bits in particular caught the attention. I hope you enjoy this chapter too. :) 


	3. Dirty Little Secrets

**Wonders Unceasing**  
  
******  
  
**Disclaimer:** You know the drill.  
  
**Author's Note:** Critique is good. Critique is my friend. If something works, let me know. If something doesn't work, let me know that too. Thank you! :^)  
  
******  
  
**Chapter Three: Dirty Little Secrets**  
  
The Potions Laboratory was cold, the chill striking Snape through the soles of his slippered feet and slithering icily upwards until it lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. He shivered, hastily setting a hand to the edge of a worktable as his knees shuddered and threatened to give way. Granger was frowning at him; he was sure she'd spotted his moment of weakness. The walk from the hospital wing had proven more exhausting than he'd ever admit.  
  
"Don't just stand there," he snapped, irritated by his own traitorous body. If he moved away from the support of the table then he was going to find himself sitting on the floor, and the rapidity of that inevitable descent would no doubt add additional bruises to his current collection. Instead he turned away from the centre of the room, bracing himself against the support of the wooden worktop while selecting measuring glasses and decanting vessels from the collection on the wall shelves above the table.  
  
"You know where the store room is," Snape went on. "Going on past evidence, you are perfectly familiar with the contents... the Boomslang skin, anyway." He smirked at his hands when he heard Granger's indrawn breath, and almost chuckled when she said nothing at all for several seconds. He'd never been able to decide whether she knew that he'd been well aware of who it was had made off with his missing supplies five years ago. Her response finally gave him the answer: she'd had no idea at all. After a moment's further reflection he found he was rather disappointed. He'd hoped for better than that from her.  
  
"I found the layout was very _logical_," Granger said pointedly once she had gathered her wits, managing to colour the comment with a faint trace of amusement.  
  
Snape hid his smile behind the scowl that he directed over his shoulder. "Then make use of that... organ you presume to call a brain, and assemble the ingredients. The stores in the hospital wing will be short of Skele-Grow, Sanguinem Supprimere, Redigerinflamini, Anti-Petrifaction Lotion, Pepper-Up Potion and Dreamless Sleep Potion¹. I trust you can remember the ingredients. They _were_ required for your N.E.W.T.s."  
  
"I think you'll find Pepper-Up Potion was actually part of the material for the O.W.L.s, Professor," Granger remarked.  
  
Snape turned slowly and propped himself on the edge of the table, folding his arms across his chest and looking down his nose. "If I remember correctly, Miss Granger, the Potions practical for your O.W.L.s was your lowest grade."  
  
Granger huffed at him. "If _you_ remember correctly, Professor Snape, the class had only half the usual time because of the Kouei that Malfoy portkeyed into the dungeons right in the middle of the exam. And I don't recall you doing anything useful about _that_. If Harry hadn't done what he did, it would have suffocated Neville."  
  
Snape smirked at her, silently, watching the indignant expression on Granger's face change into thoughtfulness.  
  
"Although... it was very convenient, Ron finding a second portkey just lying around like that, wasn't it?" she said.  
  
Snape felt his lip pulling into an ironic curl. "Indubitably," he said shortly, but Granger didn't seem to hear. She had frozen, still and pale as a marble statue, her eyes staring blankly at nothing and her face tilted slightly towards the ceiling. Snape had no doubts now as to what had happened to Ronald Weasley. He waited with some trepidation for the storm of tears to come. Words of comfort would forever be dishonest coming from _his_ lips, and should Granger unwisely seek solace in his arms he was certain his legs would prove unequal to the task of holding him up, leaving him in a most undignified position.  
  
There was no outburst of sobs. Granger drew in a sharp breath, her expression hardening. "Skele-Grow, Sanguinem Supprimere, Redigerinflamini, Anti-Petrifaction Lotion, Pepper-Up Potion and Dreamless Sleep Potion," she said briskly, heading for the store cupboard without looking back at Snape.  
  
Snape frowned thoughtfully after her. This was no insecure First Year hiding behind a wall of books and eager answers, a tender ego easily punctured with words, pride that carried her away to cry in solitude and concealment. This was a woman who had always possessed the ability to stay cool and rational in a crisis, whose wits had been sharpened by adversity and who took criticism with equanimity and returned insult in kind. This was also a woman, it seemed, who could be relied on to keep doing what had to be done, even in the face of personal loss.  
  
Minerva McGonagall would have been proud.  
  
"We can use the two largest cauldrons for the Pepper-Up Potion," Snape called after her. "One small cauldron each for the others. There aren't enough fires in here for all of them, we'll have to use the classroom as well."  
  
Granger reappeared with an armful of jars and packages. "_We_, Professor?"  
  
"I'm sure your ears function correctly, Miss Granger." Snape knew his voice lacked bite. Where was a bad mood when you needed one? "You didn't think I intended to let you sit here and gawp uselessly while I provided you with entertainment, did you?"  
  
"Actually, I was assuming you'd make me do all the work while you practiced lurking and glowering." Granger was smirking at him! She was setting down the ingredients on the surface in front of him in neatly sorted little stacks, and _smiling_ sideways at him with an annoyingly smug little half-smile. "Although maybe you'd prefer to try looming and glaring down over my shoulder at the potions instead?"  
  
"Twenty points from Gryffindor for forgetting your place, Miss Granger." Outrage finally provided Snape with a convincing air of sneering superiority. It redoubled when Granger merely nodded acceptance and began to prepare the cauldrons for use. She showed no contrition, no horror at letting her House down, and not the slightest hint of being cowed. Nor was there any sign of the bravado with which some might have tried to shrug off the penalty. She hadn't answered back. There was absolutely nothing he could fault her on in her response.  
  
In seven years of Potions lessons Granger had obviously learned far more than how to brew a few potions. He'd been trying to hammer home the more subtle lessons of life thought most of his time in the teaching profession, with limited success. Now one of his pupils showed signed of having mastered his unofficial curriculum- and instead of finding satisfaction in his success he felt rather peeved: Irritation aside, he'd been enjoying the battle of wits until Granger had actually won the round. Won it by not responding, no less.  
  
"The Skele-Grow and the Anti-Petrifaction Lotion need least attention, so I'll set those up in the classroom," Granger announced.  
  
Snape waved at her to get on with it, letting her do the moving around. He could keep himself busy enough sorting and measuring ingredients without having to leave his seat. Moving as little as possible seemed wise. The potions would need attention for at least a couple of hours, and he had to conserve his strength if he was going to last that long.  
  
Snape returned to his preparations at the work table, pulling forward a cast-iron balance and a stack of brass weights. The pixie dust had to be trickled onto the pan of the scales with a steady hand. The stuff was so fine that the lightest breath or the slightest disturbance would whisk it up into a hallucinogenic cloud. Properly it should have been measured in the fume cabinet. Snape did not give much for his chances of making it that far without dropping the jar. He could keep his hand steady, if he concentrated hard enough.  
  
Behind him, a loud clang rang out.  
  
Snape froze. The momentary silence suggested that Granger had done the same.  
  
Slowly, carefully, Snape turned his head enough to let out the breath he'd been holding. He took in another, and resumed his task. His hand remained utterly steady. He permitted himself a small smirk and a moment of pride. "If lifting the cauldrons by yourself is too much for you, Miss Granger, I'm sure you can try a charm. I've heard you're adequate at wand waving."  
  
Snape could feel Granger's eyes narrowing as she glared at his back. "If walking to the fume cabinet is too much for you, Professor, I'd be happy to cast a containing charm on the more dangerous ingredients," she said.  
  
Snape glowered at her. "Perhaps that alternative had already occurred to me."  
  
"You couldn't have cast it already because…" Granger's come-back trailed off hesitantly. "Actually, it's not the best way to tell you that," she continued, sounding apologetic. "I'm sorry. Your wand was broken in the final fight with the Death Eaters, after Voldemort… ended. I'll get on with chopping things." She turned away from him and took herself off to another table to work, burying herself behind a heap of roots, shoots and dragon scale, averting her eyes.  
  
Gryffindor tact, Snape thought sourly. As subtle as a Blast-Ended Skrewt in a fireworks factory, and just as likely to send sparks flying. How did Granger expect him to react to the news? Bawl his eyes out? He'd never really liked that wand anyway: Laburnum and Sphinx hair, nine-and-a-half inches. It suited him far too well for him to be comfortable with it.  
  
Snape shook the thought away, and then waited for his head to stop spinning at the incautious movement. Granger was pottering around behind him, preparing the base for the potions. There was no need to check on her. Her work was always accurate. Perhaps she'd grow overconfident in the absence of his usual critical overwatch, but she'd have to deal with that on her own.  
  
Silence settled over the pair, save for the small sounds of slicing, chopping and shredding and the musical tinkle of jar lids, spoons and delicate metal weights. Granger's robes swished softly as she shifted between the cauldrons, adding and stirring. The preparations became almost hypnotic in their repetition. Time became timeless, precision became art.  
  
Snape reached for another twig of rosemary, and woke from a daze of automation when his hand came back empty. He stretched a little, straightening the kinks in his spine, and twisted around to see how the potions were getting along. The pile of ingredients on Granger's table was all but gone. Aside from the simmering time and the additions required that he himself had not yet prepared, most of the potions were complete.  
  
"How remarkably efficient of you, Miss Granger," he noted. "In a hurry to escape? You must be aware of the dangers of rushing a potion."  
  
Granger managed to become even more industrious than usual, bending over her work and chopping a mallow root with an accuracy that was unnecessary for the potion it was to be used in. "Actually, Professor, I thought you asked me here because I wanted to talk to you in private."  
  
"Speaking does not require the use of your hands, Miss Granger." Snape found he could lean one elbow on the work table for support as he measured out a critical quantity of dried valerian.  
  
"You won't like it," Granger informed him.  
  
"If you know you won't like an answer, Miss Granger, then don't ask the question." Snape had neither the desire nor the energy to encourage confidences. Despite his repressive tone, his remark managed to do just that.  
  
"Have you ever cast the Killing Curse?" Granger blurted quickly, as if she'd held back the words so long that they had slipped out of its own accord. She had looked up from her chopping. Snape caught her eye before he could stop himself, and there was no challenge in her gaze, not even a flicker of curiosity. There was no accusation, although he recognised revulsion in the depths of her chocolate brown eyes. He saw neither fear nor hatred; instead he found a blank, black, helpless, hopeless morass of irreversible guilt.  
  
Avada Kedavra. The Killing Curse. Feared, loathed, and Unforgivable. The last moments of Voldemort's final battle played themselves across his mind's eye, images standing out against a grey haze of memory and choking smoke. Four figures determined that the war ended there, then, on that spot. Four wands trained on the Dark Lord. Four voices announcing his sentence: and the noble, upstanding Gryffindor Granger, implacable and unhesitating, had pronounced death.  
  
Of course she had sought him out. He, Snape: Death Eater and double agent, unclean and sinful, whom Granger couldn't taint because he was already blackened by his past. Snape, who would know all about the Unforgivables. Snape, who couldn't point a finger without adding hypocrite to the epithets already applied to him by others. Who else would she go running to with the weight of self-recrimination resting so heavily on her shoulders?  
  
"I told you that you wouldn't like it," Granger said. "I only wondered, because… because I wanted to know… if it was normal to feel nothing at all afterwards. I cast an Unforgivable, which ought to land me in Azkaban, most likely, and I… I've tried to feel guilty about it. I've tried to feel sorry that I killed someone… and I don't. I'm _glad_ he's gone." Her gaze was both earnest and hollow, holding an appeal that expected to be rebuffed.  
  
"I've thought about it," she went on, still not looking away, "and if I ended up back there again I'd cast the Killing Curse again, and I _still_ wouldn't regret it. And I ought to. I ought to regret it. I ought to feel guilty. And I don't." Snape saw Granger searching his face, looking for an answer she wasn't going to find there. "But I know you do…" she said, softly now, reading something Snape had never intended to show.  
  
"I despise self-righteous Gryffindor guilt-trips," Snape drawled, deliberately scornful. "But allow me to dispel your misconception. I don't regret casting Avadra Kedavra on Voldemort. Not in the slightest. It got the job done, and there was no time for an alternative. I am a Slytherin, Miss Granger," Snape reminded her sourly. "We use any means necessary to achieve our goals."   
  
Granger's hands had left the mallow root and the knife as she listened, silent and lost. Her arms had crept up to wrap themselves about her torso, and her expression was still desperately bleak. "I know that. I know it had to be done. But isn't it what Voldemort would have done if the situation was reversed? And does that make us no better than him?"  
  
Snape scowled. He should throw her out so she could find her housemates and their sugary reassurances. No doubt they'd have her confessing all before a Ministry tribunal soon enough. She'd spill out false regrets at the use of an Unforgivable until she succeeded in persuading herself that she was sorry for it after all, and then pay whatever penance she felt like extracting from herself until she either regained her sense of self-worth or beat herself into the ground.  
  
They wouldn't send her to Azkaban, of course, but they would undoubtedly use the situation to force her into doing whatever they wished of her, and that would be an utter waste of her potential- which was still underdeveloped after years of tagging along with Potter and Weasley. There was time yet, however, to see if the wallflower could be persuaded to mature and blossom. "I find your attitude insulting in the extreme," he rapped.  
  
"Why?" Granger asked, sadly. "Because you were the obvious person to ask about an Unforgivable? Because I implied that you've done things you feel guilty about? Because I've suggested that Voldemort had no less virtue than the rest of his former House? Because I said 'us'?"  
  
"Because you perceive chivalry as worth," Snape responded angrily. "Because you're convinced that your own moral values are better than those of anybody who thinks differently. There are no right answers, Miss Granger. There is no absolute truth, no black and white, and no justice." Snape found himself trembling from the force of his vehemence and set a hand to the seat of his stool to steady himself. His lungs felt heavy. Breathing was becoming an effort.  
  
"Then why did you spy against Voldemort?" Oddly, Granger's question sounded more rhetorical than direct, an impression that was confirmed when she continued. "How could you manage to do that when the only thing you could be sure of was that what you thought was the right thing to do might not be what everybody else thought? How… when everything is grey? How could you risk trusting your own judgement? How could you find the strength?"  
  
"How did you find the strength to kill Voldemort, Miss Granger?" Snape's voice sounded cold and distant to his own ears. Granger seemed to be sitting in the bright centre of a narrowing tunnel of awareness.  
  
"It had to be done," Granger said, the reply filtered through a high-pitched buzzing sound. Snape wanted to look for the insect making the noise, but couldn't risk turning his head in case it fell off. He clutched the stool with both hands now. The ground was too far away. Granger was saying something… looming towards him… the world lurched… his knees hurt. The floor was closer. His arms were wrapped around something warm and solid.  
  
"Professor Snape!"  
  
Was that who he was? Snape blinked and focussed on a face that was much too close to him. Granger's hair had begun escaping from its tie, strands curling madly across her cheek and falling into her eyes. She smelled abominably of chamomile and balm. Snape tried to push himself upright. The smell was making him dizzy.  
  
What had they been talking about? "You were saying, Miss Granger?"  
  
"I think you ought to lie down for a bit," Granger said.  
  
"I'm perfectly alright," Snape bit out, automatically, fumbling behind him for the stool so he could pull himself up. The room was leaning at an odd angle. The walls must have been talking to the moving staircases.  
  
"I know. It's just the fumes from the potions," Granger soothed. The insufferable girl… woman… was humouring him. Damn him if she wasn't going to have to finish the potions for him. He couldn't risk fainting into one of them. "Or maybe there was something in that potion Madam Pomfrey gave you," Granger suggested.  
  
That must be it. "Some sort of sedative…" Snape muttered.  
  
"Probably," Granger agreed. They both knew otherwise, but it allowed for Snape to keep his pride intact.  
  
Snape was both embarrassed and furious to find that there was no way he could stand without leaning heavily on the Gryffindor's shoulder. Intolerable. "Miss Granger, aren't you forgetting something?"  
  
"I can stir the Dreamless Sleep potion on the way past," she replied. "And the Skele-Grow needs ten ounces of shredded boneset adding in half an hour. Don't worry, Professor. I've had one of the best Potions teachers in the Wizarding world."  
  
"And forgotten almost everything I've tried to teach you, no doubt," Snape said.  
  
"Oh shut up," Granger told him. It shocked Snape enough that he complied, remaining silent as they stirred the cauldron as required. Only then did Granger hesitate. "Can you manage to give me directions to your room? Or shall I call Madam Pomfrey?" she threatened when he hesitated.  
  
"You've got a lot to learn about manipulating people," Snape growled at her.  
  
"I know, but I've got one of the best teachers for that too," Granger grinned at him. Snape scowled back. Her voice was too bright. Nobody bounced back from doubt and despair that fast. Yet again Granger had swept beneath the carpet the things she did not have time to deal with when more immediate problems appeared.  
  
She couldn't keep it up forever. Something would crack eventually.  
  
He was too tired to deal with that thought now. Wearily he guided Granger towards his quarters, mentioning dire consequences if the knowledge ever went any further than herself. He would rather she'd left him there at the door, to drag himself into his private sanctum and curl up in peace, but she didn't trust him to make it as far as a bed on his own. Snape was chagrined to realise that she was probably correct.  
  
At least she spared him the indignity of undressing him like a baby; or perhaps she found it amusing to leave him in his hospital gown. Regardless, as soon as he was propped on his bed she left him to himself and withdrew without comment.  
  
"Miss Granger." Snape saw her hesitate at the door in response to his call.  
  
"Did you need something else?" she asked.  
  
"No. I… have some… advice." He took a breath, cursing himself for his hesitancy. He hoped she would take it for tiredness, and pressed on. "Not that any Gryffindor in recorded history has ever followed advice," he drawled, managing an approximation of his usual manner, "but it may eventually happen."  
  
"That would just be statistical error," Granger told him. "I _always_ listen to my teachers, though. Should I take notes?"  
  
"That won't be necessary." Snape let his head rest back on the pillow, closing his eyes. He really was tired. More than tired. Bone weary, utterly drained, and perilously short of defences. "Miss Granger, Voldemort is gone but the war is not over, as I'm sure you are aware. Those left have the _joyous_ task of picking up the pieces and tidying up the last of the opposition, which will no doubt come as a nasty surprise to those so intent on partying over Voldemort's mouldering bones. You have… adequately managed to keep yourself together while those around you have probably either fallen apart or begun ordering their drinks.  
  
"I would advise you to keep doing so, if you can, until this matter is finished." Snape could feel his jaw clench. He let out a long breath and made himself relax. "After that… let yourself grieve, however hard it might seem. If you lock away your feelings then it will only become harder to admit to them, until releasing them becomes impossible. And now go."He managed to raise one arm far enough above the bed covers to flick his fingers dismissively. "Out!"  
  
Despite her evident surprise, Granger turned to comply.  
  
Snape let his whisper follow her from the room. "If I feel guilt, Miss Granger, it is not for casting the Killing Curse on Voldemort. It was beacuse my first thought was to cast the Cruciatus Curse instead."  
  
He heard the door close softly and at last allowed sleep to claim him. For the first time in years, his dreams were quiet.  
  
******  
  
1. I don't know who deserves the credit for the invention of Dreamless Sleep potion. I've come across it in several fanfics now. If you know the originator of the idea let me know and I'll add an appropriate thank you.  
  
**To all my wonderful readers:**  
  
Iejasu, you're making me blush :8} . Kalaratri, I'm honoured that I earned one of your rare reviews. Mary, the filter's gone, thanks for pointing it out. Shen Mi- here's the next installment! Zebee, nice to have another review from you and thanks for mentioning the particular things you liked. Mandy, I hope this starts to explain why Hermione's a touch too cheerful. Nightshift, Cosmoballerina, thank you too. Pigwidgeon37, welcome back and thanks for letting me know what worked well. Sk, glad you're enjoying this so far. Linnetjo, another of those nice people with specific comments, thank you! Redone... hee! Poor Ron, he gets killed off or shoved aside so often in Serverous/Hermione fics, doesn't he? Maybe this chapter starts to show how well Hermione isn't dealing with his fate after all. Jinni- here's more! Crystalline Temptress, I hope this chapter keeps up the standard. Nameless reviewer... I'll get back to Harry. Different people react to death in different ways, and often the reaction isn't the most appropriate or expected one. Inieda, I'm blushing again :8} . Stonecoldfox- yipes! You've got me worrying that the rest of this won't be up to scratch now! As for Alan... I liked Nottingham, but I wouldn't dare count myself a dyed-in-the-wool fan next to some people around here, and some of the appealmight have been the beard. I'm a sucker for beards... Frustrated, be not frustrated, I have finally posted more. Surreal- I'll email, but not tonight. It's pumpkin time in the UK.  



	4. More Straw For The Camel

**Wonders Unceasing**  
  
******  
  
**Disclaimer:** Not my sandbox, not my toys, and some of the ideas are definitely recycled as well.  
  
**Author's Note:** Chapter four, and the initial idea was a one-post PWP. That's either a very good case of a small bunny proving to be a prolific parent, or a very bad case of not sticking to the initial premise.  
  
Thank you for reading if you're new, and BIG thanks for coming back if you're a regular reader. This chapter's a bit shorter than the last one. It reached a natural break, so I stopped. As always, critique is welcomed. I've changed from referring to 'Granger' to using 'Hermione' instead, as this is mostly Harry's POV. I'd appreciate it if people could let me know whether it works, please. Thanks. :)  
  
******  
  
**Chapter Four: More Straw For The Camel**  
  
Hogwarts' hospital wing was still busy despite the lateness of the hour. From behind privacy curtains came whimpers of pain and the distressed reflections of nightmares. Assistants and half-trained mediwizards did what they could, alternately berated and encouraged by the weary, hassled but unrelenting Madam Pomfrey. Some beds now sat empty and stripped by the House Elves, their former occupants packed off to House dormitories or transported to St. Mungos for specialist treatment. Two of the wounded had been escorted away by Aurors- one shamed, one defiant, both bound securely and watched by the silent, accusing eyes of the castle's defenders.  
  
Harry Potter had disobeyed Madam Pomfrey's orders and slipped out of his bed. He had only removed himself to a quieter corner, however, and she let him be. He had found a window alcove, let into one corner of the castle's thick tower walls. There was a faded crimson window cushion on the deep, narrow ledge. Harry curled himself into it, wrapped in his hospital dressing-gown and his thoughts.  
  
The window was tall and arched, diamond panes of leaded glass distorting the view beyond so it seemed as if it looked out into a waterscape scene. Darkness mercifully shrouded the world beyond the glass, dulling the harshness of death and destruction. The silent blackness was lit by the tiny wand-glows of those searching for survivors and making a tally of the dead. The colours of their charms formed a faint pastel cobweb across the ground. Smoke still coiled across that faintly glimmering net and veiled the star specked sky, oozing thickly from a flickering red light within the heart of the Forbidden Forest. The broken pole of a single Quiddich hoop thrust up into the centre of a full, red moon.  
  
Harry barely registered Madam Pomfrey's voice above the distant hospital bustle.  
  
"Well, thank you for the potions, my dear, but I distinctly remember giving you orders to tie the man down if he tried to get up. He's in no state to be brewing anything at the moment… I thought so! I don't know what he was thinking… that was a rhetorical remark, my dear. He actually let you finish them on your own? Wonders will never cease. Harry? He's right over there, my dear."  
  
A shifting of the air, a subtle change in atmosphere and the slight scrape of a shoe on the stone floor heralded Hermione's appearance in the entrance of the windowed alcove. Her indistinct reflection ghosted itself onto the face of each diamond window pane, swimming against the green-tinged glass.  
  
Harry did not look away from the view outside. He seemed to find it an effort to speak, his voice dull and detached. "It's all over."  
  
"No," Hermione replied, a little frostily, "it's not."  
  
Harry wrenched his eyes from the battlefield and turned his head to scowl at his friend, anger and hopelessness warring across his face. "It's over! Everything! It's all over! Seven years of life… that was when my life really started, you know." His hand dragged shakily through his already disordered black hair. "When I started Hogwarts. Hogwarts, the three of us- you, me, Ron- Gryffindor Tower was home, Mrs McGonegall was… safe, home, someone to look after us. Life was surviving Voldemort's attacks… and now it's all over. All gone. My whole life."  
  
Hermione seemed unable to answer. "It'll seem better in the morning," she said eventually, the words sounding inadequate. "Everything always seems better in the morning. Have you any idea how melodramatic you sound," she went on less sympathetically. "And why the sudden change of mood? Two hours ago you were cuddled up all cosily with Ginny, having a whale of a time by the sound of things."  
  
Harry scrubbed an arm across his face and stared back out of the window. "You're still angry with me, aren't you," he mumbled indistinctly.  
  
Hermione sighed. There was a rustling of robes as she sat down on the floor beneath the window seat. "No, Harry. I'm too tired to be angry, but I still can't understand why you'd… ugh! How could you even think about it? After Ron… Harry, how could you? And don't give me the silent treatment. I'm not shouting, I'm listening. Just make sure it's good."  
  
"I… wanted to feel alive, I suppose." Harry bent his neck until he could rest his forehead against the chill glass of the window. "I wanted to find something that was still… untainted, and uncomplicated, and young, and happy. I don't think the first part worked, but at least Ginny will sleep well tonight. Knowing someone loves her. It makes one of us."  
  
There was another long stretch of silence before Hermione spoke again. "Do you love her?"  
  
"Yes," Harry answered simply. "Why would I say I did if I didn't?" he added, with a touch of defensive belligerence, when he looked down and caught the sceptical expression on her inverted face.  
  
"It's not that I don't believe you, Harry," Hermione apologised. "It's just that love seems like such a strange idea. The romantic kind, anyway. I used to believe in it. I used to think I felt it. Then I grew up, and realised it was just a couple of schoolgirl crushes, and started to wonder if the whole idea wasn't just an idealistic dream. Why do you love Ginny? The word's so small but the concept's so _big_."  
  
Harry leaned his head against the window again. "It's not big. It _is_ small, like the word. Lots of small things. She's pretty. She likes me. She wants to hold hands while we go for a walk by the lake. She's just so _normal_. She wants a nice little house, and children, and a big untidy garden where the kids can make mud pies and fly their broomsticks and chase the gnomes. She wants evenings together in front of the fire, and big, comfortable dinners with sausages and mash and gravy and sponge pudding with custard. She wants a home..."  
  
"You love Ginny because she's a younger version of Molly Weasley?" Hermione suggested with a slight grin in her voice. "It's okay, I'm teasing. I can understand that you'd want a home, Harry. A proper, happy home, just like Ron..." Her voice faltered slightly, but she went on. "Is that really love, though?"  
  
Harry shrugged. "You asked why, 'Mione. That's why. And I do love her. But she doesn't love me. She thinks she does, but it's still mostly one of those schoolgirl crushes. I'll look after her, 'Mione. You know Ron would want us to look after her, both of us. Maybe later she'll love me, when we've got ourselves that house, and ten kids, and gnomes in the garden and bats in the rafters. If she doesn't…" he shrugged, and went on in carefully light tones. "She'll find someone else. I'll let her go."  
  
"Oh Harry…" Hermione sounded as if she didn't know whether to howl with frustration or cry with sympathy.  
  
"I'm used to it," Harry said. The bravado was hollow and resigned. "Everyone always leaves, in the end."  
  
"Don't be so defeatist!" Hermione's hair tickled Harry's leg as she shook her head. "You beat Voldemort! If you can do that, you can do anything!"  
  
"Ron beat Voldemort," Harry disagreed. "It was his plan that got everyone close enough to attack. Neville beat Voldemort too. He was the one who healed Snape, and without Snape the rest of us probably wouldn't have been enough. So it wasn't me. I could have been anyone. It was Ron and Neville. They were the important ones."  
  
Hermione lightly slapped Harry on the leg. "Right. Ron and Neville. And what do you think Ron would say if he could see you now?"  
  
"He'd be jealous, because everybody's already talking about it as if it was just me who killed Voldemort," Harry snapped at her. "Nobody remembers that Ron was there, or Neville, or you, even, or Snape. I'm The Boy Who Lived, so I'm the one who was _destined_ to face Voldemort. All my life, that's what I've been. And now Voldemort's finally gone… what am I? The Man Who Killed?"  
  
"You're Harry," Hermione told him firmly.  
  
"That's _who_ I am, but how many people know that?" Harry hugged his legs closer to his body, resting his chin on his knees. It made him look absurdly young. "How many people know _me_? I'm a what, not a who. Maybe I should go back to the Muggle world. I could be a who again there."  
  
"No, you'd still be a what," Hermione said resignedly. "Everyone's a what. That's the way people work. They put labels on things because that's the easiest way to deal with them, and nobody really gets a say in what labels other people give them. It's life." She shrugged. "It's not fair. It ought to be, but it isn't, and it doesn't get any better. I'm sorry." She clambered stiffly to her feet and stood over Harry. "But _I'm_ still here, and I know you're a who. And I couldn't care less whether you're The Boy Who Lived, you're going to stop skulking here in the corner getting cold, and come with me, and get into bed, and drink the Dreamless Sleep potion I'm going to give you, and get some rest. And if you try to argue with me then I have a wand and I'm prepared to use it."  
  
Harry managed a weak grin as Hermione dragged him to his feet with a hand clamped on his wrist and hauled him back towards his bed. "What would I do without you to boss me around, Hermione?"  
  
"Spend all your time playing Quiddich and fail all your exams," Hermione responded tartly. "Bed." She pointed. "In." She held out a potion bottle. "Drink."  
  
"Are you allowed to hand out potions like that?" Harry asked, pulling up the bedcovers and taking the vial.  
  
"I made it," Hermione replied as Harry uncorked the potion and gulped it, pulling a face at the taste. "I've got to test it on someone, haven't I?" Hermione added, smiling slyly.  
  
Harry lowered the empty bottle and looked at it suspiciously. "As long as there's no cat hair in it," he mumbled, eyelids already drooping. "Merlin, 'Mione, that stuff's strong..." He slumped back against the pillow, struggling to keep his eyes open a moment longer.  
  
Madam Pomfrey peered over Hermione's shoulder. "Serverus asleep and Harry smiling again, the potions restocked, and the help you gave me earlier..." The mediwitch sounded exhausted. "Hermione, my dear, you're quite indispensable." She patted the younger woman on the shoulder and smiled tiredly at Harry. Harry managed to grin back.  
  
Hermione closed her eyes, willing away her own weariness. "It's quite all right, Madam Pomfrey. I'm sure everyone is doing what they can. Do you need any more help?"  
  
Pomfrey hesitated so long that Harry's eyelids drooped closed. In the silence, a Second Year whimpered.  
  
"I'll take that as a yes, then," Hermione decided. "Lead on, MacDuff¹."  
  
"Sorry, dear?" asked the slightly bemused Pomfrey.  
  
Hermione sighed, her voice growing distant, as if she'd turned away. "Muggle quote. Never mind. Just show me what to do." Harry's limbs felt thick and stuffy. Two sets of footsteps tapped their way into the distance. Hermnione's voice was the last thing he heard before unconsciousness claimed him. "Sleep probably wouldn't do much knitting for me anyway..."  
  
******  
  
1. Shakespeare, 'The Scottish Play', as is the knitting reference in the last line. I don't know how much Hermione would have kept up with Muggle literature with the entire Wizarding library at Hogwarts to occupy her. The portrayal of Witches and Wizards in Muggle literature is probably required for Muggle Studies, wouldn't you think?  
  
Thank you everyone who corrected me on the Dreamless Sleep potion. I wrested the relevant book from my son and tracked it down to the source. :)  
  
You're all so darned nice! Thank you! **blueyed-angel**, more blushes from me. I quit Latin to do Ancient Greek instead, and I never did get the hang of all those tenses, so I'm sure by the time I'm done you'll find a whole bunch of errors :( . **Orange**, glad you're enjoying the dialogue, here's more! **linnetjo**, thank you, I'm trying to keep things believable (although it's probably making the story a little slow paced). **EireVerde**- do I sense an Irish connection? I know what you mean about starting stories while they're still in progress. I promise this won't turn into one of the kind that never get finished (assuming I don't get abducted by garden gnomes, swallowed by giant squid, or killed by a random rogue bludger...).  
  
**Elsie**, on Snape's voice, thank you. Snape strongly reminds me of one of my old teachers, who had the ability to effortlessly reduce First Years to tearful quivering wrecks with a single sentence. He didn't even score a one in the 'tall, dark, handsome' contest either. Some of it must have rubbed off on me anyway, though. Cynicism comes very easily these days. I only wish I was quick-witted enough to think of the nastily entertaining come-back lines in time to say them, instead of producing the perfect lines about three hours too late :p . **cassy**, thanks. I like writing dialogue (hopefully I'm restraining myself so there isn't too much of it). I'm glad the issues don't seem too cliched. I'm sure other people have already covered similar ideas, so I'm trying to keep the approach fresh. **Cho**, thank you, I'm trying to keep it up :) . **mym2000**, here's more! **Inieda**, I was quite pleased with that line myself ;) .  
  
**Susanna**, welcome back :D . I was a little worried that the guilt conversation might be a bit confusing, but it sounds as if I put it across okay. I'll say hi to **AngelSnape** at this point too. The thinking behind Snape's initial impulse in the final confrontation with Voldemort actually came from watching my son's reactions when someone bullied him. The desire to make others hurt in return for pain they have inflicted is a very human one, and one that is often at odds with rational behaviour. People claim they want justice, that they want to make sure nobody else will be hurt, and that they want to make an example of the wrongdoer, but what most people _really_ want is the satisfaction of watching the other person feeling just as much pain and suffering as he or she caused. Ack, I'm such a cynic when it comes to human nature.  
  
**stonecoldfox**, I'd be blushing again if I wasn't still channeling Snape after the previous comment. Actually this isn't the original story at all, but once I started writing the characters took over and refused to cooperate with my initial idea. Now they're camping out in my brain and directing my fingers on the keyboard :p . **surreall**, I have gone on with the story, hope you enjoyed :) . 


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